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Real ID: Coming to a State Near You?

By: Doug Gale

4/11/2008

Growing up in the Midwest, I'd never met an adult that didn't have a driver's license. As a teenager, a driver's license was a rite of passage that opened access to a whole new world. It seemed almost un-American to my adolescent mind not to get one as soon after your sixteenth birthday as humanly possible. A few years later as a college student I discovered a downside--that slip of paper (yes, it really was printed on a slip of paper) contained information, my birthdate. And every bar near campus wanted to see it.

We forget is that a drivers' license is a recent phenomenon. Missouri and Massachusetts were the first when they passed laws in 1903 requiring all drivers to have a license. In Missouri the cost was 25 cents, and a test wasn't required until 1952.

In the United States, a driver's license has become a de facto identification card. We use it to cash checks at the grocery store and board airplanes. When I moved to Montana a few years ago the only person ahead of me in line at the Division of Motor Vehicles was an elderly gentleman. He was seeking to get a drivers license after a lapse of many years. Not to drive, which he had stopped doing years before, but because he got tired of the hassle involved not having one for identification.

What's Real ID?
Following 9/11 there was a push to change procedures for issuing identification documents, particularly when they were used to board airplanes. While the original motivating factor behind Real ID was terrorism, the objectives have grown to include addressing problems associated with identity theft and illegal immigration.

Congress, however, has ducked the politically contentious issue of creating a national identity card and instead decided to require states to comply with federal standards for driver's licenses, effectively transforming them into a de facto national identity card.

The Real ID Act of 2005 basically states that beginning May 11 of this year state driver's licenses and identification cards will not be accepted for federal purposes unless Department of Homeland Security (DHS) determines that a state is compliant with the Real ID regulations or the state has been approved for an extension. In practical terms we're talking about getting on an airplane or entering a federal building such as a courthouse. The deadline for a state requesting an extension was March 31 of this year.

What's Required?
This January DHS released the regulations establishing minimum standards for state-issued drivers' licenses and identification cards. Basically states will be required to have proof of an individual's identity and U.S. citizenship or legal status through documents such as a birth certificate or green card before issuing a drivers' license or identity card. The states must also build security features into the card itself to make them harder to forge and implement a mechanism to share data with other states and the federal government through a common architectural framework.